There’s a glaring problem when it comes to Antti Tyrvainen’s future with the Edmonton Oilers: offense.

The 5’10”, 200lb forward has earned a reputation as an energy forward – fitting into that “agitator” category while also fighting and hitting. If all of that sounds like code for “dirty” there are at least a few people who would agree – according to Hockey’s Future, “Tyrvainen developed a reputation in Finland as a dirty player who played over the edge on a regular basis and hit to hurt.”

One of the best background pieces that I’ve seen on Tyrvainen is this interview from the excellent Artful Puck blog. There is plenty worth quoting, but I thought Tyrvainen’s explanation of who his favourite players were and why says a lot about his game:

I think one Finnish player, Jarkko Ruutu. He played many seasons here and many games. And his other brother, Tuomo Ruutu. They play hard, sometimes going inside other guys heads. I like those guys.

Tyrvainen also expresses the way that playing far from home, having difficulty with the language and breaking his wrist early in the year hampered his game (2011-12 was his debut season in North America).

Put it all together, and there is room to be positive about Tyrvainen. He’s still relatively young, just having turned 23 in April. Between injury and the difficulties of adjusting to North America, he can presumably do more than he did this past season. He plays a style that teams are always looking for. Certainly head coach Todd Nelson, talking to Cult of Hockey’s Bruce McCurdy, took an optimistic tone when discussing the young Finn:

Antti Tyrvainen is a guy who came to us at the start of the year, and he was trying to find his place. Start of the year we had a lot of guys, we used him in and out of the line-up. He didn’t really get into a rhythm, and then he got injured. After his injury he came back, and something must have clicked with him or I don’t know if he felt more comfortable, but he started playing some very good hockey for us. He’s a guy that’s tough to play against, he’s always a pest, in fact the referees come to me about once a game and tell me to settle him down, but that’s part of his game.

With a lot of our first-year guys, it takes them a while to adjust. Some of them are adjusting quicker than I expected them to, but the reality is we have quite a bit of talent here in Oklahoma City, but we only have twenty spots where we can dress guys. So it’s hard to find ice time for everybody, but we’re going to do our best so that everybody can develop and succeed.

There are some negatives. Looking at penalty minutes over the regular seasons, Tyrvainen took three fighting majors and 28 minor penalties. Looking through the game-sheets, on five of those occasions it was was a case of off-setting minors, but that still leaves 23 times when Tyrvainen put the Barons down a man. That’s a lot of opposition power play time being generated by a guy playing 55 games of fourth-line minutes. It’s possible that he draws enough penalties that he’s a net positive in that category (he was dinged by AHL referees rather frequently for diving, so at least he’s trying) but that many penalties taken is something of a concern.

The biggest problem, though is offensive talent: Tyrvainen’s never really shown a knack for scoring. Using Gabriel Desjardins’ league equivalencies and adjusting for games played, we can project Tyrvainen’s scoring from 2009-10 to 15 points over a full NHL season. In 2010-11, the figure is 20 points. This year, it was 13.

Every forward other than the pure enforcer needs to score at least a bit to hang on to a roster spot. Given the style Tyrvainen plays, and his likely role in the NHL – fourth-line agitator – he doesn’t have to score a lot, but he needs to score enough. It’s not at all clear he’s going to make that jump.

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